Les cartographies du corps

Muscles of the human body, Persian, 19th C Wellcome Images

Cartographies of the Body Workshop -///

Madrid, October 22-24, 2012

 STS department, Philosophy Institute, Spanish National Scientific Research Council.

There are many ways to talk about the body. Yet, there are also many ways to practice and visualize bodies. In this conference we aim to have an input selection of versions and repertoires of bodies in the analyses offered by STS and social science approaches. The body is the primary environment in which we live, the physical boundary that identifies us, as “unique individuals”, and the other, other bodies. Science and technology have focused on the task of knowing, opening, modifying, slicing, describing and prescribing notions on bodies. For this conference, we do not wish to start with a predetermined idea of what a body is and what are its borders but we seek to analyze, however, the many bodies that can be  enacted by different practices and the connections between them. Thus we invite contributions to the conference that seek to offer a version of the body, topographically or analytically, empirically or theoretically.

What other repertoires could be mobilized to talk, practice, and visualize bodies? What are the networks that can be made visible to talk about them? (The destruction of the public and the erosion of the commons and its effects on bodies, the fluidity of notions of the “patient” and “illness”, the metabolic and gastric functions of eating for which without no bodies will survive, etc.)

Confirmed key note speakers are Thomas W. Laqueur (Department of History, University of California Berkeley), Sebastian Abrahamsson (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam) and Sandra Eder (Institute and Museum for the History of Medicine, University of Zurich).

///-Contributions

To be considered, please send a talk title and short abstract (250 words max) along with your name, institution, and email to cartographiesofthebody@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission is  JUNE 15, 2012. We will have the final program by JULY 15, 2012.

///-Place and Date

The Workshop will take place in Madrid, at the Center for Social Science Research (CCHS), Spanish National ResearchCouncil (CSIC). From Monday OCTOBER  22^nd to Wednesday  24^th, 2012.

///-Organizers

This will be the final workshop of a  4 year investigation devoted to the technologies of the body, and the #4 workshop of the Cartographies of the Body research team (FF12009-07138-FISO). In 2009 we celebrated the Science, Technology, and Gender: Bodies and Differences, in 2010 the Cartographies of the Body: bio-politics  of Science and Technology, and in 2011 the Cartographies of Science and Technology: Ethnographies, Images, and Epistemologies .

Contact: cartographiesofthebody@gmail.com